TheHitchhikers GuideTo The Galaxy

Earth Edition

Harlem, an experience..

I have worked with kids on the streets about 13 years, and I had my own childhood in a rich village that had high status and a father who was a lawyer (1940 - 1990) and local politician,etc.

In 1980 I went straight to a Addicts Rehabilitation Center in Harlem, New York. I was there for a few weeks. It was asif I was on the moon. A total different world.

But there was óne thing that shocked me the most; a HUGE wall of glass around this ghetto. You did not see it, but the more you could féél it. No living space for poor skilled coloured people. No way.

I came to know kids from the age of 18, who néver in their whole childhood had seen more then two or three blocks in Harlem.

Anyhow, my point is in relation to the riots in French; Let the rich white middleclass turn down the walls and reach out. Let the unskilled poor coloured people stop hiding themselves behind "discrimination" and use their talents.

In those three weeks I had never in my life experienced so much human "warmth" then there, in the A.R.C.in Harlem. It was for me like a warm bath.I had never experienced that...

The poténtial among the poor is there, but meeting must come from both sides. From the whites we might expect three dubble effort because they are the "haves". But the other side cannot escape their prison on the wings of the victim-cult, although there would be much reason for it. But it doesn't help. It will never help them to create a better life.

I was there in 1980 at the ARC-Harlem , because it was run by former black addicts,who worked with a lot of engagement and realizing the need for real order.(250 addicts in óne building). It was accepted, because there was no arrogance, no prejudice. If someone disagreeded he could call the chief staff day ánd night, seven days a week.

The "whites" will need the "blacks" to brake these prejudices down, because it's almost impossible to do that from their/our/my heavely protected homeground.

P.S. Do we know why the USA is that agressive to Holland in case of extacy? Because it's the ónly drug that is sold by their own white middle class kids and they don't like to send them to prison. Therefore they only want to stop the basic supplier = Netherlands.(and of course it should not be produced, etc.) This political ánd police-strategy, has a racist element.

Harlem, an experience..

One is privileged or one is not. One group is privileged and the other not. Maybe by accident, birth, social pecking order,lack of humour, or sheer discrimination and racism.

Best chances one gets in the USA - and Europe - if one is white, middleclass and christian, as my oldest daughter is in New York. However she doesn't lean on it and she doesn't hide behind it and steps out that suffocating climate.

You may ask oneself; "hide behind it?" Behind whát?

Well, there's a new say these days in and around New Orleans (Nov 2005), because the black community (with a lot of poor peoples, dope addicts, criminals, or those out of jobs) are not allowed to return at this moment to search in their houses for private things. Let alone return. Forbidden for "medical reasons". They must start sómewhere, you know and they are the last in the row.

I don't expect anyone to long for the return of dangerous gangs, etc. But that's not the real question, because there is no moral and legal right to create that question. It is a wish from others in town, who create the question; "who has the ríght to live here and who hasn't". No one has the moral obligation to be glad with any neighbour they have. You may deslike as much as you want, but don't touch the trigger about the "right" live where they are. Also in Europe it is more and more a rising question and it really fuels etnic frictions.

What struck me in a Dutch docu I just saw at TV was, that a white middle class woman who returned to the city and visited her house, had two dominant feelings. "Well, normally I would never in my life have dared to walk around in a street like this one. No way". Just straight from her heart. Silence.

"I wonder where they all are. How are they? Are they not even allowed to get personal things out of their own houses, like others are in the city? Where are they all gone?. Just straight from her heart. Silence.

End of docu.

There appear to be other white, middle class, christians around New Orleans,who thank god "he finally flushed the toilet". Straight from their heart.

God as a lavatory attendant(mále, ofcourse), who has a job for all those `haves` to clean this globe from all these people they don´t want to cope with. I believe they would have flushed jesus too if he lived in New Orleans these days. Too much engaged with, well you kow.... Mankind waited for him 2000 years and they look back on him another 2000 years, but in his short lifetime mankind killed him at the age of 33. I´m not saying I would not have joined them in their rejection.

Well, at least let's flush that divine lavatory attendant through the lavatory, to save humanity and let´s make this white, middle class christian woman president of the United Stated ánd Europe*.

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